Jimmy Kimmel Is Still on the Front Lines in the Fight for Universal Health Care

Jimmy Kimmel is mad as hell and he’s not going to take it anymore. The target of the late night host’s anger is Louisiana Senator Bill Cassidy, who appeared on Kimmel’s show in May and assured him that any future health care legislation would need to pass “The Jimmy Kimmel test” in order for him to support it. That didn’t happen.

Kimmel’s tone on Tuesday, was decidedly different from the teary-eyed plea he made in May, when he revealed that his son was born with congenital heart disease, forcing him to undergo open-heart surgery.

“No parent should ever have to decide if they can afford to save their child’s life,” an emotional Kimmel said at the time. “It shouldn’t happen.”

While the entanglement of politics and entertainment has become the norm since the rise of Trump, Kimmel’s speech struck a different chord because of how personal it was. He took health care, which can often feel too abstract or too complicated for many Americans to wrap their heads around, and brought it down to a human level. Yes, he’s a high-powered celebrity who vacations with other high-powered celebrities, but in that moment Kimmel could have been anyone; your neighbor, your friend, a member of your own family.

It also marked the moment Kimmel became one of the most recognizable faces of the fight for universal health care. And on Tuesday, five months after that first monologue went viral, Kimmel showed the world (and congress) that he doesn’t plan on going quietly into the night.

“This is not my area of expertise,” Kimmel told his audience. “My area of expertise is eating pizza, and that’s really about it. But we can’t let him do this to our children, and our senior citizens, and our veterans, or to any of us,”

It was clear the Kimmel felt used and misled by Cassidy, who he described as “not very honest.” Kimmel urged his audience to get in touch with their representatives in Congress and displayed a number for them to call. “You have to do this,” he urged. “You can’t just click ‘like’ on this video. Tell them this bill doesn’t pass your test.”

Kimmel, who was aware of some of the backlash that emerged after his first monologue, ended by directly addressing anyone who might want to accuse him of using his platform to play politics.

“And by the way, before you post a nasty Facebook message saying I’m politicizing my son’s health problems, I want you to know that I am politicizing my son’s health problems, because I have to, because other kids have health problems,” he said. “My family has health insurance. We don’t have to worry about this. But other people don’t, so you can shove your disgusting comments where your doctor won’t be giving you a prostate exam once they take your health care benefits away.“

It wasn’t long before Cassidy caught wind of Kimmel’s outrage, which he was asked to address Wednesday morning on CNN. “I’m sorry he does not understand,” Cassidy told CNN host Chris Cuomo. “Under Graham-Cassidy-Heller-Johnson more people will have coverage, and we protect those with pre-existing conditions.”

Well, it appears that Cassidy isn’t the only one who “does not understand.” A recent piece by Vox, in which they asked 9 GOP senators to explain exactly what the Graham-Cassidy bill does, reveals a deeply misguided motivation that essentially boils down to doing something for the sake of doing something. Frogive us, but we’re going to have to side with Kimmel on this one.